


this is how you start (with the heart)

by jesspava



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Pining, Trains, emo boys in love, excessive amounts of walking around in the dark, ice shows - Freeform, pyeongchang 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-03 19:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15825741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesspava/pseuds/jesspava
Summary: Shoma breathes through the quiet between them, the lack of sound that settles into the creases of his room like dust: between the bookshelf, the lamp, the bed. Even his skin is stained with light as it comes shuttered and broken through the blinds.He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the first tear lands belly-up on the back of his hand.





	this is how you start (with the heart)

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't expecting this either
> 
>  **disclaimer:** i know nothing about the real yuzu &shoma or yuzu and shoma. their fears (and personality, to an extent) that i wrote about here are all fictional.

It happens first, after the Olympics when Shoma’s wrung out from a whole day of press, tumbling face first into his bed and knocking out for the next twelve hours.

**keiji:** dude where are you?  
**keiji:** we’re going out for food  
**keiji:** team jpn i mean  
**keiji:** and a couple weird americans but it’s chill  
**keiji:** text me back  
**keiji:** shoma??? 

 **satoko:** Hey Shoma, where have you been?  
**satoko:** Everyone’s worried  
**satoko:** Hope you are just asleep :D  
**satoko:** Please reply :(  

 **kaori:** congrats on the medal blah blah  
**kaori:**  where did you go

 **yuzu:** shoma :(((((((((  
**yuzu:** please come eat with us  
**yuzu:** i know you’re tired but i’ll be there to keep u from falling asleep in ur bowl ~  
**yuzu:** shoma?  
**yuzu:** we’re going out now … you can come join us if you want  
**yuzu:** sleep well  

Mihoko left him a voicemail that Shoma doesn’t bother listening to. He tosses his phone in the bed, and then lets his own body follow. He’s not really sure what time it is anymore, but it’s bright outside — sun leaking out from under the curtains — and his ankle’s doing the same stiff, aching thing that is has all season; he really doesn’t feel like moving. 

When Shoma finally peels himself out of bed and slumps his way to the shower, the outline of his waistband is purpling, but his bruises don't hurt too bad when he pokes at them later. He washes his hair, and then stands under the water for twenty minutes too long, shuffling around the bathroom until his phone almost vibrates itself off the bed and he resigns himself to the fact that he'll need to leave his room at least sometime today.

It’s a bit of a surprise, though, to find Yuzuru with his hand raised to knock when Shoma opens the door. He doesn’t actually realize anybody’s there, too busy reading Keiji’s spam texts to actually notice, and ends up walking right into him, Shoma’s phone hitting the floor right before he does. 

“Ow,” Shoma says, rubbing his forehead. 

He looks up, whole face pinched even when he finds Yuzu smiling down at him.

“Playing games again?” he teases.

“Uh,” he says, and lets himself get pulled to his feet. “No...? Keiji was texting me.” 

“Oh,” Yuzu says.

“Did Satton send you?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes. He misses the way Yuzuru looks at him, his whole face softening. "Is anybody still here?"

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “They might’ve gone to see snowsports together. You missed dinner with the team last night.” 

“Yeah,” Shoma says. “Sorry.” 

“’S okay. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t died earlier.” 

They get to the elevators. Shoma waffles between going downstairs and going to the lounge. He does that awkward shuffle he usually saves for the cameras, and Yuzuru must take pity on him for it because he pulls Shoma along to greet their team without having to be asked. It’s strange, how close they’ve gotten to each other when they barely meet during regular seasons, much less one where Yuzuru disappears off the face of the Earth for. 

The times they come together aren’t always pretty, and Shoma wonders if that should make him hate Yuzuru, just for the shadow he leaves behind. When the days are long and the nights even worse, he curls up in the space between the bed and the wall and tucks legs up to his chest, feeling like all he’s ever going to do is live in the dark. In his nightmares, his fists are coated with dust. 

Still, when Yuzuru suggests dinner, Shoma can't find it in him to refuse.

“Where do you want to go?” Yuzuru asks, loping down the hallway towards him. He holds out a jacket for Shoma to put on because it’s cold outside and even with the gala skate over, there’s still Worlds a month away; he shouldn’t get sick here. “Wanna leave the Village?”

Shoma squints down at his phone, where he’s pulled up a slew of restaurants within reasonable walking distance. “I don’t know,” he says, slowly. He looks up at Yuzuru. “You don’t happen to speak Korean, do you?” 

Right. Yuzu had forgotten about that. 

Despite their terrible navigation skills and the lack of a GPS, they manage to find a restaurant that lets Yuzuru do most of the talking. Shoma tries to order milk tea in broken English, but ends up with milk on its own, staring blankly at it for the first twenty minutes of their dinner before Yuzuru offers to drink it for him. He says it makes bones grow.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Shoma says, finishing half the glass at once. He grimaces, and then pushes it over to Yuzuru’s side of the table. “But what do I know?” 

The restaurant they’re in is small. The rooms are small, their table is small. Yuzuru stretches his legs out because they’re starting to ache again, but pulls back when their shoes bump together. 

“’S okay,” Shoma says quietly, and in that particular way of his. He scoots around until their ankles twist together, his knees pressed up against the bottom of the table before he offers up a smile, the kind he never does in front of the cameras. Yuzuru slumps down into his chair, the strangeness of his chest easing some. He doesn’t know how Shoma does that.

He likes to think he’d gone stir crazy after the Prix injury. He'd had too much time alone and ended up texting Shoma for the first time in months, half out of his mind. It’d been strange at first, Shoma juggling practice and schoolwork and having always been abysmal at replying to people without dealing with schedules on top of it, but whatever half sentences he’d replied with somehow made it easier to breathe at night.

He’s doing it now, a little bit, just by being here, Yuzuru at a loss now competition adrenaline’s starting to wear off. It’d held up last night with all the drinks and the karaoke bar, a whole mass of their friends piled up so full he didn’t have room to think about anything else, but Shoma’s quiet, wordless when he knocks Yuzuru’s chopsticks aside and shoves a wad of rice in his mouth. It's just the two of them and the one ahjumma in the corner, humming as she strips the stalk off string beans at her own table. 

“What am I supposed to do?” Yuzuru asks, out of nowhere. The conversation had died off a while back, but the silence had been welcome between them, and Shoma had left him the last inch of milk at the bottom of the glass, scratching at his elbow absentmindedly after pushing it to his side of the table. 

Shoma looks up at him without surprise. He isn’t caught off guard, not even when Yuzuru wants to cringe at how loud his voice is over the barely-there music and the sound of dishes being done through the closed door of the kitchen. Shoma’s eyes are rounding, like always, and he’s wearing that blank look again. Not the tired one, something brighter, the eyes that Yuzuru finally learned how to read after years of careful study.

Shoma puts his chopsticks down and leans forward a little bit, so that the toe of his sneakers slides against the seam of Yuzuru’s jeans, just on the outside of his calf. He’s gentle in the low light, even the shadows seem to melt into him like water. 

“You should stop thinking so much,” is what he says. Like always, Shoma never asks. He somehow just knows better than Yuzu does. 

He stuffs another wad of rice in his mouth.

Yuzuru can only stare, feeling jarred in the bones like he’s landed a jump without bending his knee right watching Shoma sit back in his chair again and finish off his tofu instead. He doesn't know what to say.

“I mean like that,” Shoma huffs, when Yuzuru realizes he’s gripping his chopsticks hard enough to break.

He pushes his empty bowl to the side. Shoma folds his hands together and rests his chin on them, blinking up at Yuzuru with this look: sympathetic, maybe? Gentle, at the very least. “Maybe you could find yourself outside of skating. You can start by going outside you know. Visiting Toronto or something.” 

Yuzuru looks at him. “I’m doing ice shows,” he tries, as an excuse. He doesn’t know what he means by it. 

“It’s not home though.” 

“It’s Japan.” 

Shoma shakes his head, creased in the brows. He’s never been good with words, but Yuzuru’s being like this on purpose. Frustrating. “That’s not what I meant.” 

Yuzuru looks down. It’s hard to admit, for some reason, that Canada’s never really felt warm to him. He's only there for work.

“It doesn’t have to be Sendai, you know.” 

His breath catches in his chest. Shoma, he just—

“I meant like a tourist, or something,” Shoma murmurs. He ducks his head to catch Yuzuru’s eye, offers him this tiny, warped smile, somehow worth more than any medal he’s ever won at competition. “You could take Evgenia with you.” 

Yuzuru’s throat closes up. “I—” he tries. He swallows, then clears his throat a little. "What about you?"

Shoma's eyebrows disappear behind the mess of his hair, and his cheeks going blotchy pink under the lights. His fingers twist up into themselves, lips curling into an embarrassed laugh. He’s vulnerable again. Known.

“Um,” Shoma manages, after valiant effort. He rolls his chopsticks around just for something to do. “We have tour soon,” he says, meeting Yuzuru’s eye. 

They won’t be at all of the same dates, but they’ve always gotten close during shows. Shoma’s terrible and he’s doing just about everything he can, though sometimes Yuzuru’s on his own. It’s weird, a whole gear-cog of schedules to juggle between the two of them. 

“Then let’s do this again, okay?” Yuzuru says, when they get up to leave.

It’s dark, unlike Seoul, because Pyeongchang is woodsy and sweet-lived in, Shoma suddenly finding himself pressed up against Yuzuru because he’s warm and the sidewalk is small and it feels a little too much like drifting away when he can’t see much except the stars and the cars going past.

“Okay,” he says. It’s not like he and Yuzuru weren’t friendly before; he’s always hesitated to call him anything else, the way he's familiar with Keiji and Kanako. He’s kind of like Javier, in a way, someone he talks to when they meet, someone he texts back when Yuzuru texts first, someone who keeps trying to let him in but he keeps at arms length anyway.

They walk together through the town, skirting the circle of Olympic Village and her pretty lights. Yuzuru’s leg is stiff but it doesn’t hurt, and he knows Shoma’s had an ankle thing all season, so their pace is slow, meandering. 

Shoma’s quiet except for the sound of his shoes on the concrete, and it’s strange: normally Yuzuru would fill up the silence with his own stream of conversation, not really caring that he doesn’t have the words in him to reply, but tonight Yuzu feels like he shouldn’t say anything at all, as if the two of them have found new balance they aren’t supposed to break. 

He thinks that his head should be filled with doubt again, having all this time to be by himself with the worst of his monsters, but instead it’s just calm, and terribly peaceful.

There isn’t much around: just the trees, and little banks of snow. The grass, which are a mass of shadows that seep up into the horizon, and the curtain of sky above them. The dark is everywhere like an envelope, and when Yuzuru turns his head to the side, Shoma’s profile is lit in white and yellow against it. The world at first, all black, but if Yuzuru looks a little harder, he can pick out the navy and the violet and the undertones of blue, the same moon as Sendai’s moon, the same stars at Sendai’s stars.

Shoma's hand somehow finds its way into his pocket.

It’s a good thirty minutes back to their building, but only because they take it so slowly, Shoma shivering when he scans his badge and they hurry into the lobby together, still attached at the hands and hips. They bump around together like little marshmallows up the elevator, speeding past the common room to Shoma’s floor. He’s giggling, nose scrunched up as they come to a breathless stop in front of his room. 

“Wanna come inside?” Shoma asks. He’s fond, and happy, all his preservation suddenly gone. 

Yuzuru nods. He’s feeling reckless too. “Yeah,” he says.

“Sorry, it's,” he says, fumbling for his keycard and pushing the door open. “A little messy.” 

“So nothing I haven’t seen before.” 

Shoma rolls his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “So mean.” 

“Hey!” he says, indignant.

“Whatever,” Shoma sticks his tongue out at him, untangling their hands and cranking the heat up so he can shed his parka and wad it up haphazardly on the desk chair. He goes to the drawer by his bed, and pulls out his DS from where it's charging, landing belly-down on the mattress and bouncing a little while somehow getting his shoes off at the same time. “Let’s play games.” 

Yuzuru groans, but joins him without much complaint. His legs are longer, so he has to bend at the knee in order to fit in shoulder to shoulder with no space in between, but he can feel the heat of Shoma’s skin through the fabric of his shirt and it's so comfortable once they're settled properly, he can't find it in himself to care.

It's nearing midnight when Shoma yawns, and leans his head on Yuzuru’s shoulder like it’s nothing big, as if Yuzu hasn’t been touchy with him since Shoma’s first year as a senior with nothing but awkward exchanges in half-lit hallways in response.

They fall asleep together sometime between one and two in the morning. Shoma in a pair of too-big sweats, and Yuzuru in jeans. The bedside lamp's still on when they wake up in the morning. 

 

**✻  ✼ ❊ ❉ ❈❉ ❊ ✼ ✻**

 

If anybody asked what they are, Shoma would say he doesn’t know.

Sometimes it feels like he’s been in love with Yuzuru his whole life, ever since he’d broken out into seniors. The past couple years have been long — long in the way that makes him feel strangely and terribly tired. He loves skating, he really does, but not everyone’s built for fighting without rest, and he remembers the night after Worlds when all he could do was cry and cry and cry.

The next time they’re together after the Olympics is Nagano for Heroes&Future. Shoma’s been doing spotty shows across the country, and Yuzuru too, with Fantasy on Ice. He’s not really sure how he’s supposed to feel about meeting again, if Yuzu’s going to treat him with that strange mix of polite distance and constant touchiness, if he’s going to push his way back into Shoma’s life with reckless abandon and mess everything up. 

He’s honestly not even sure he’d consider them friends, because friends do things like let Shoma slowly become one with their couches during off season, and drag him out, knowing he has boundaries but never care when it counts, who can hold a conversation with him and not have Shoma’s heart feel like it’s beating its way out of his chest loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. He feels awkward standing too close to Yuzuru now, as if he’s a Renaissance painting — _please stay behind the yellow line —_ because Yuzuru is so much, just on his own, a whole hurricane and a half, and Shoma’s never been strong enough to carry him with both hands. 

When Yuzuru suggests going out to eat, it’s a sly thing. He says it underhand, casual, slipping it into conversation right as they’re waiting to get off the ice after the group practice. He asks when Shoma’s head is still spinning from new choreography and he’s worried about forgetting the whole thing and then getting himself run over during the opening or the finale or maybe even both, but Yuzuru’s question still registers through the haze of anxiety and his foot skitters out across the ice, just barely, before he can stop it from happening. 

“I found a place online,” Yuzuru murmured, crowded up a little in Shoma’s space. It was like he didn’t want the others to hear, even though the only people around didn’t speak Japanese. “We can check it out later if you want.” 

Shoma blinked up at him, a little daftly, quite numb. His tongue felt warped in his mouth, and it was a miracle he managed to say, “Yeah, sure” without waiting for the silence to stretch into awkwardness between them.

One of the rink staff had squeezed in behind them then, forcing them closer, Shoma’s feet between Yuzuru’s feet, his head tipped back almost painfully.

He slipped his hand into Yuzuru’s to keep from falling over. It would’ve been easier to hug him, maybe, or put his forehead down on his shoulder, because there’s something terribly intimate about it when Yuzuru’s eyes widened with surprise, but tugged Shoma to him without pause, slinging an arm over his hip, easy.

Shoma couldn't see anybody except Yuzuru where they stood, back to the rest of the rink, missing the way Keiji watched, and glanced over at Sota, the way Wakaba bit her lip, the way Satoko looked down at her phone and tried to pretend she didn't know how things were going to end now that they’d been set in motion. 

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

Shoma’s a lot quieter today. There must be something bothering him because he was like this right after team skate at the Olympics, curling up into himself on the common room couch with the rest of them and trying to smile through his reassurances. He’d fought hard, they all did, but he’d admitted to Yuzuru later that he felt like he’d let them down somehow, as if his hundred and three short program score wasn’t good enough to meet his own standards. 

He surprised Yuzuru earlier at the rink when he’d been the one to initiate touch, face blank like it always was, but Yuzu couldn’t stop himself from pulling him closer. Even through his gloves, he could feel the heat of Shoma’s skin. He’d held right over the waistband of his pants, where the shirt thinned out and rode up on its own sometimes.

Even now, Shoma sways into Yuzuru’s touch, doesn’t even let go of his hand. It’s not like he's complaining though, lifting his arm up and letting Shoma slot into his side on the way out the rink doors. 

They’re like this the whole way to the restaurant, laughing when they get their directions mixed up and end up walking twenty minutes in the opposite direction before they even get back onto the right street again. Shoma's warm where they meet, and at some point he ghosts his fingers over Yuzuru’s where they rest over his waist just to smile at him. Heat settles low in his stomach, even half an hour later and Shoma's dropping off in his bowl of rice. 

“Hey,” he says, knocking his knee into Shoma’s under the table. He looks up, blinking slow. His hair’s gone frizzy from his shower earlier, and the sun slants through the windows just so it catches off the crown of his head, the light breaking around him. His big eyes go hazel; the only way they do when they’re quiet together like this— on accident. “Are you okay?” he asks. 

Shoma tips over until he can rest his head on the wall with a thump. He looks at Yuzuru a bit sideways. “I guess,” he says. “I don’t know. I’m tired.” 

“Oh,” Yuzuru frowns. He shouldn’t have taken Shoma out, he realizes. Twenty-something competitions in one season and the trainwreck of Worlds during an Olympics year is more than enough to ruin him. And Shoma’s doing all sorts of ice shows on top of that too, even ones in the middle of the season for his fans. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t even think—” 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I wanted to hang out with you.” 

Yuzuru’s stomach flips.

“We could’ve played games at the hotel or something,” is what comes out instead.

He's afraid he’s tiring him out too fast, taking up the energy Shoma usually saves for practice by dragging him out when he should be sleeping.  He's got a short battery life, Yuzu's learned over the years. People don’t know when to leave Shoma alone sometimes; there’s a reason why he finds refuge in his games and the emptiness of a single room.

He shrugs. “We can still do that,” Shoma says, trying to pass it off as casual and missing it by a mile. “Unless you want to sleep.” 

Yuzuru shakes his head. "Let's walk," he says, when the bill comes and he's already got his card out without even thinking. He hands it off to the waiter before Shoma can fumble for his wallet.

It’s busy where they are, not Tokyo busy, but loud enough with the hum of cars and life that Yuzuru has to lean down a little to hear anything Shoma says afterwards. Not that he speaks much, the half inch of distance between them louder than the people flying past. A crease that settles uncomfortably between Shoma's brows.

He’s not sure how close they are to the train, but they end up at the station somehow, looking up at the callboard together.

Yuzuru wants to punch himself in the face. _Stupid, stupid,_ he thinks, reading the scrolling timeslots for arrivals without registering any of them. He doesn’t notice he’s curled his hand up into an awful fist until Shoma bumps his arm with a can of orange soda, still cold from the vending machine in the corner.  He's already popped the cap of his milk tea, raising his eyebrows when Yuzuru doesn’t move at first, breath catching high up in his throat every time he swallows.

Yuzu's never been so out of his depth as he is now, bumming down the street, Shoma knowing both him and his career too intimately for the words to belong to anybody else. He fucked up, somehow, because the tiles are always shifting and he never knows where to put his weight between them, but Shoma’s showing him forgiveness in one of the odd ways he cares about his friends  —  another peculiar, kind thing about him.

Yuzuru takes the soda. It’s a second chance. Something of an _I love you,_ Shoma mustering up a smile for him after Yuzuru cracks the lid open. 

“Let’s go on this one,” Shoma says, pointing up at the bulletin. 

Yuzuru waits for the text to loop back around. “It’s an hour there and an hour back.” 

“We don’t have to.” 

It’s impulsive. A bad decision, maybe. The train’s leaving the station in less than three minutes, and neither Yuzuru nor Shoma are the kind of people to buy tickets from the office last minute, out of breath as they skid onto the platform and worm their way into an emptying coach section, Shoma still wearing his skating jacket like he doesn’t care who sees when all he seems to care about is who sees, but they do. They squish next to each other by the very back where the windows are the clearest, shoulders knocking together when the train starts moving. 

Shoma drinks his milk tea. He’s slow with it, like he wants to make it last as long as possible. Yuzuru stares at his soda for a while: knowing that it's not part of the diet plan he's been following so meticulously, but he’s allowed these things now. He is. 

Shoma leans his head against Yuzuru’s shoulder after the sixth stop. The sounds of wheels against track are low hum in the background of everything — pervasive, inescapable. The whole car is liminal. The people in the cabin with them are just passing by.

Yuzuru lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, all up in the chest. He thinks about the versions of himself he'd left behind on the ice, Shoma toeing off his shoes and tucks his legs up on the seat next to him, pressing so close that his knees bump into the side of Yuzu’s thighs. There's just not enough of him to go around sometimes.

“When you look at me,” Shoma asks, two stops away from their last station. He’s small like this, both of them curled up together. He doesn’t elaborate, just closes his eyes. "Who do you see?"

Yuzuru opens his mouth. He searches, but can't find the right kind of courage. He closes it.

They get off the train.

Shoma doesn't ask again.

It’s warm on the platform when they cross to the other side. It must be close to three in the morning. Yuzuru’s not sure why there are still trains going, and the kinds of people that must be riding them, but the sky is bruised around the edges like over-ripe fruit. Shoma clings to his elbow, and the least Yuzuru can do it empty his head with the next breath and ignore the way that his phone buzzes with new messages, sixteen missed calls. 

Shoma falls asleep on the way back, Yuzuru tired of his head snapping up every two seconds and pulls him into his lap like Keiji used to all the time, Shoma making a sleepy noise and burying his face in his jacket. He fists his hands into the hem of Yuzu’s shirt and doesn’t protest when the phone comes out and he squints up at the camera, not really awake enough to comprehend what's happening. 

TEAM JAPAN (23 members)  
**yuzuru** : hes with me :-))

“Sleepy?” Yuzu laughs, when Shoma groans at the next stop. He can’t stop himself now, tilts his chin down barely an inch to press a kiss to the top of his head, everything loose under the lights of their cabin car.  

“Sleepy,” Shoma huffs, agreeing. 

There's only the distant hum of wheels and engine and iron track between them now. Whatever happens here, Yuzuru thinks, is not the same as under the open sky.

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

If Yuzuru was stronger, and braver— a better person, he would’ve pulled Shoma in by the shoulders and held him there. He would've said: in the birds, in the trees, in all the flowers that grow from cracks in the sidewalk, things all teeming with life.

_How you put the fight in me sometimes. Shoma, you force the whole world to make sense._

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

Celebration dinner is a whole affair that Shoma doesn’t want to get into. He’s squished in the car next to Satoko on the way there because they’re both small and, for some reason, their friends find it hilarious when it’s them rattling around like two beads in a box, Satoko threatening to slit their throats open the next time they so much as reach for their phones. 

There are a couple international skaters in the show too, but they’ve been assigned to a different van, so the entire trip to the restaurant is a mess of Japanese — loud enough to shake the car and shatter window glass. Shoma still manages to fall asleep somehow, Satoko kind enough to share her shoulder and flip Kazuki off at the same time, one arm around his waist. She’s small, probably the most compact out of the whole cast — a thin-boned and birdlike thing — but it doesn’t seem that way when she manages to haul Shoma to his feet and wrangle him out the car herself. 

“Come on,” Sota grins, slapping his ass when Shoma can’t walk fast enough to keep up with the rest of the group. He doubles back, skipping circles around him as Shoma groans, tipping his head down and wondering how anyone manages to have so much energy when it feels like his own legs are made of thousand kilo weights. “We’ll be done eating by the time you get past the front door.” 

“Great,” Shoma says. “You go and do that while I go and die a peaceful death in this parking lot. You can pick my body up when you guys leave.” 

Sota opens his mouth to say something else, but then it snaps shut without a word, his whole face turned scheming and gleeful. Shoma’s squinting at him, trying to figure out what he’s done this time until—

“Shoma!” Yuzuru exclaims, jumping onto his back like an overeager puppy. He squeezes the life from his lungs like that, arms coming up around his waist and lifting him clean off the ground. It’s barely anything, a couple inches at most, but Shoma flails like he’s about to be thrown off a cliff, limbs everywhere. Yuzuru walks with him to the restaurant like that, a four-legged, hulking thing, his chin pressed right into the most painful part of his shoulder the entire time. 

“What’s gotten into you?” Shoma laughs, embarrassed, when Yuzu even pulls his chair out for him with a flourish, too dramatic to be taken seriously. “Are you taking Nobu’s place today?” 

Yuzuru grins. “Just feel like it,” he shrugs.

Most of dinner goes by fine. Shoma’s sitting between Keiji and Wakaba, the conversation loud and practically non-stop. Everyone’s in good spirits, and even Shoma’s loosened up a little, stealing sips from Keiji’s beer and making faces when he does. Yuzuru gets up after dessert to bounce around with some of the others, and Shoma can’t stop staring at the way he smiles — big, genuinely happy. 

It’s good, he thinks. It’s good that Yuzu's satisfied with this season, that after the stress of his injury he gets something to come home to at night, because if anybody deserves the glory it’s him. Shoma’s not jealous about the medal. He doesn’t really care much about it at all. 

In the end, it’s something offhand, almost frustratingly casual, that ruins the whole trip — Wakaba handing her phone off to Javier, then Satoko, everyone poking their head in for a look, the floor dropping out from Shoma's feet when he realizes they're laughing about him.

“Ah,” Javier says, sticking his elbow into Yuzuru’s side. “Has the little Shoma stolen your heart?” 

“It’s not like that!” Yuzuru protests. His tone is good-natured, but Shoma's fingers curl up tight around nothing anyway. He feels like he can’t breathe, feels like his whole body’s gone numb, and he sucks air in through his teeth and holds it there in a rush.

Of course Yuzuru isn’t in love with him. Shoma’s known this for years. He’s known this since he realized the thing inside his chest budding up since Prix days wasn't idol worship, but he thought he’d crushed the hope to pieces already, and didn't expect it to hurt so much, getting thrown in his face like this.

He goes so still that when the conversation slows, Keiji notices from across the room. And if Keiji notices, then that means Satoko notices, that makes Yuzuru notice and Javier too, the lights blurring painfully around him. He knows they're trying to get his attention, but Shoma can’t tear his gaze away from the tablecloth and the little stain he’d left on it earlier — wine bleeding into the pale outsides.

“Sho?” Yuzuru says, so quiet. He can tell everyone else is pretending to be busy, but he can feel their eyes on him. “Are you okay?” he asks. He’s kind to do it in Japanese, but it doesn’t matter. He's gone transparent, clutching his wine glass, the way he’s frozen in his chair, everything tense and pained and hurt. 

He can almost feel the intake of breath from everyone in the room when he fails to hold back the tears that have been building in his throat for weeks now, their heads turning to him, and he feels so stifled, hates the way they can see him in his stupid little glass house, he— 

“I’m sorry,” Shoma says, shooting to his feet, chair skittering out behind him. He can’t look anyone in the eye. He bows so far over he almost slams his head into the table. “I’m not feeling well, I’m just—” he’s not sure what he’s going to do. He can’t even drive, the cars were to take the whole group there and back, but he can’t sit through the rest of the dinner with people either pitying him or wondering what’s going on and they were having so much fun before he’d spoiled the mood, and he. He needs to leave. 

Shoma pushes out the restaurant doors and doesn't stop running until his lungs hurts more than the rest of his thinning, bruised chest.  

****

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

 **keiji** : shoma what happened??  
**keiji** : please reply  
**keiji** : shoma please  
_[21 missed calls]_  

 **satoko** : shoma are you okay?  
**satoko** : everyone’s so worried  
**satoko** : i’m so worried  
**satoko** : please talk to me  
_[17 missed calls]  _

 **yuzuru** : i’m sorry  
**yuzuru** : shoma  
**yuzuru** : please tell me what i did wrong  
**yuzuru** : shoma??  
**yuzuru** : shoma????????  
**yuzuru** : i’m sorry i’m so sorry whatever i did i’m sorry  
_[14 missed calls]  _

 **javier** : Shoma, please talk to us!!  
**javier** : Let us know if you’re doing Okay…  
**javier** : We always want to support you :(

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

Shoma’s not in his room in the morning.

Yuzuru shows up to breakfast looking haggard, much like the others, feeling like he’s done something terrible without knowing exactly what. He stands knocking at Shoma’s doorstep for twenty minutes, and when Keiji catches him in the hallway, and said he might as well go back to his own room and finish packing; he’d tried earlier too.

Shoma must’ve turned his phone off or let it die sometime between last night and this morning, which is so unlike him; he carries chargers with him wherever he goes just to play games on the bus, and part of Yuzuru worries that he never made it back to the hotel after he'd left.

He doesn’t know what went wrong— if he said anything, if it’s because he’d been joking around with Javier about the selfie he’d taken of them on the train. Shoma doesn’t need someone to sit next to him and hold his hand, but he gets overwhelmed sometimes, and Yuzuru doesn’t blame him for wanting to leave. He should’ve paid closer attention.

He lingers in front of Shoma's door for ages, up until Maia catches him by the elbow and says he should probably go downstairs to wait for the bus with the rest of them.

They’re going opposite directions during departure — Yuzuru back to Sendai for a week, and Nagoya for Shoma — but he wants to apologize before distance comes between them again, needs to make sure things won’t go backwards anymore. He can't lose him. He can't. It’s so difficult trying to keep a conversation going when they’re not face to face because Shoma has this tendency to drop out of chats at the strangest times, and really only replies when he remembers to, not when he should. 

“Yuzu?” Javier asks. He’s taking the same shuttle as him, dragging all his suitcases up to a stop. He offers half a smile when Yuzuru turns to look at him, surprised. “I’m sorry, I…don’t think he’s coming,” he says. “We should go.” 

Javier’s right; they’d be late otherwise, and he can see the van pulling up to the front of the hotel, engine idling. Yuzuru lets out a breath, keeps his eyes closed a second too long. “I know,” he says. He risks one last glance over his shoulder, hoping Shoma will somehow emerge from the elevator with all his stuff, just so he can talk before they meet at Grand Prix. “I just—”

Heroes&Future was their last show together. After this, Yuzuru will perform in Fantasy on Ice, and Shoma with his own cast a month later; they’ll be in the same country, but they won’t be close. The realization stings.

“Yuzu,” Javier says, again. 

“Sorry,” Yuzuru shakes his head a little, as if to clear it. He coughs, then turns back to the lobby doors. “I’m coming,” he says. He puts one foot in front of the other. “I’m coming.” 

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

In the end, it’s Keiji who corners him. 

Shoma’s all but disappeared from the Team Japan group chat, even though Yuzuru’s still fairly active from what he can tell, scrolling through the notifications every morning. He’d tried muting the app once, but then he couldn’t see the messages Mihoko had sent him, and he felt bad leaving after he’d been cornered by the girls before their show in Osaka and been threatened an inch from his life. 

He’s bumping around his apartment after practice when his doorbell rings. Itsuki raises his eyebrow from where he’s lounging around on the couch, but shakes his head when Shoma asks if it’s one of his friends.

“Let me in, freak,” comes Keiji’s voice, albeit slightly muffled. He pounds the flat of his fist against the door until Shoma gets over the initial shock and he shuffles over to open the door and offer Keiji a pair of slippers, all out of habit. He doesn’t know what he’s doing in Nagoya, much less inside Shoma’s apartment, dragging him by the wrist to his bedroom and turning the lock behind him. 

Itsuki doesn’t even look up from his computer the entire time. 

“It’s been two months,” Keiji starts out, pushing Shoma down so he’s sitting on the edge of his bed. “And we all agreed to give you space because, honestly what the fuck, but it’s been _two months_ and I can't take this anymore.” 

“What?” he says, confused. 

“You—” Keiji practically rips Shoma’s phone out of its charging socket where it’s propped up by his bookshelf, and shoving at it until the screen lights up and he can scroll through the past five hours of conversation about chicken wings in the group chat. “This!” he says, jabbing his finger at a line of Yuzuru’s comments about proper seasoning and the double frying method.

Shoma opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. 

It's not…he's not entirely unaffected about it; that’s the thing. Maybe he hasn’t listened to the voicemails yet, but he’s read Yuzuru's messages — seen them go from insistent to resigned to nothing at all — asking if he’s doing okay, how his training’s going, if he could please just call him back, please, he’s sorry about what happened in Nagano, _I just want to talk_.  

“Javier says he’s tired of listening to him talking about you, and if I have to entertain Yuzu again about why you're not messaging him back, I will actually, probably, most definitely toss my phone out a window.” 

Keiji’s joking, but they’ve known each other for too long for Shoma not to recognize this as his way of caring. Shoma’s had his moments in the past, but they’ve never been like this before — never so intricate, or convoluted.

“You’re gonna say it’s stupid,” Shoma says. He puts his hands neatly together in his lap, and winces when Keiji comes and sits down next to him. He wonders if it’s considered rude to run out on an intervention. He’s sorely tempted to try.

Shoma’s not sure he wants people to know how he feels about Yuzuru, least of all his friends, because it’ll end up splintering the group like a bad divorce and he can’t be responsible for something like that. He doesn’t want pity, doesn’t want to show up at competition practice and have everyone staring, treating him like spun glass. 

He just wishes he could swallow enough air to become it. 

“Hey,” Keiji says, when it’s really been quiet for too long. He puts his hands on top of Shoma’s, dipping his head down to try and catch his eye. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” 

He shakes his head, once, almost painfully hard, telling himself not to cry, his nose bridge tightening up. Shoma closes his eyes, and sucks in this breath that comes out wheezing and terrible, shaking on the inhale. 

“It’s Yuzu,” he manages.

Keiji makes a soft sound, punched out with worry. 

“Did he do something?” he asks. “Did he say—”

“No,” Shoma cuts off. He could never _do anything_ the way Keiji thinks. God, Shoma’s pretty sure Yuzuru could get away with murder with how much everyone loves him. 

Keiji frowns. “Okay,” he says. “But…?”

“I.” 

Shoma looks away sharply. It’s the only word he can force out for a long time. 

He thinks about the years between them. He thinks about Yuzuru— hasn’t stopped, actually, even in the weeks they’ve spent apart. It’s barely anything compared to the six months they usually don't see each other during the end of each season and the next, never mind an Olympic year when they have no reason to spend an extra month together, sharing the same apartment suite with the rest of the team, wandering down to practice together at the rink in the mornings.

Sitting here, with his blinds half open and the red sun coming through, Shoma wonders if it’s worth telling Keiji, at the very least. He'd keep it quiet.

Shoma breathes in the quiet between them, the lack of sound that settles into the creases of his room like dust: between the bookshelf, the lamp, the bed. Everything is heavy yellow, even the back of his hands are stained with the light as it comes shuttered and broken through the blinds. Shoma's socks are mismatched, he notices, staring down at the hardwood beneath their slippers.

It hurts.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the first tear lands belly-up on the back of his hand.

Keiji lets out a noise like he’s just been hit, Shoma unable to comprehend anything at first, so used to the stone pit held in the center of his stomach that the numbness has started becoming routine with pain, until the river breaks loose from the heat of his lungs and has to press shaking hands down against his thighs, has to find something to hold onto before the tide rolls in and breaks him away. 

Keiji laces their fingers together and pulls Shoma to him, holding him by the back of his head and watching him shake apart. Slowly, at first, then the shipwreck that follows. 

“I love him,” he gasps, finally. Shoma’s a pretty crier on the ice, but he isn’t one now, fisting his hands in the bottom of Keiji’s shirt and feeling confession shaking him from the roots up. “I love him, _I love him,_ I—"

“Oh, oh,” is all Keiji can say, as if everything makes sense now. He pulls Shoma into his lap and collapses against the headboard with him in his arms, face pressing his face down into Keiji's neck and wishing he could cut this piece out of him like cancerous meat, as if love could be twisted into a mess of rotting fruit. “Oh, shh, it's okay. It's okay.” 

Out the window, there's only the hair-sliver of the moon, and a handful of stars — held there like someone had reached up and tossed them into the sky. 

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

when are shoma & yuzuru going to realize they’re in love (betting pool members ONLY)  
_12 members_  

 **keiji** : this is kind of depressing  
**keiji** : but shoma knows  
**keiji** : since GPF 15  

**kanako** : oh shit

**satton** : …

**sota** : oh my god 

**keiji** : yeah

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

Yuzuru came to terms with himself at the end of Team Trophy. He’d done it alone, freaked out, called Javi, then his mother, then disappeared into the void after the competition and tried to ignore his problems by skating them away.

He’d always thought Shoma was cute — in the way children, or small things are cute — and doted on him the way anybody might. It wasn’t until Shoma hugged him backstage, had agreed to marry him on the podium, had gone to the Olympics and shared a dorm with Yuzu and fell asleep with his head on his chest and clung to him with everything laid open for the first time in all the years of their tentative friendship did Yuzuru realize how deep things went.

He knew Shoma never felt the same, so he’d contented himself with the idea of remaining friends long before they started really, truly talking, but it hurt, when Shoma started pulling away. It hurt having to text his friends to ask what happened, if he did anything wrong, what he should’ve done instead. When he’d FaceTimed Keiji and Satton, they spoke like they knew something he didn’t and said to give Shoma space, _sorry Yuzu it’s better this way,_ and all he remembers thinking is: I fucked it up so bad. The guilt, when he gives it enough air, keeps trying to eat him alive.

He’s in the middle of a session when the Club’s secretary comes in. She does her best to get his attention, but Yuzuru’s got tunnel vision when he’s on the ice, so Javier skates over to the boards to pick up the message himself. When Yuzuru breaks for water, Brian joins them, head low, voice down. They take a long time together, long enough that Yuzuru wants to go over and ask what’s going on because they keep shooting him looks over their shoulders and it’s making him uneasy, the tense line of their bodies. They get up off the ice, go out the door.

“What’s going on?” Evgenia asks, where she’s just emerged from the locker room. She frowns, standing up on her toes to try and see through the windows. “Did they just leave in the middle of your session?” 

“Yeah,” Yuzuru says. He goes over to talk to her and puts his elbows on the boards, then his face in his hands. “I don’t know what happened.” 

“I don’t know either,” she shrugs. “But I think they were talking about you,” she says. “I heard your name when I was walking in.” 

Oh. 

“Maybe you should go see,” Evgenia offers him a smile, coming up to where he’s standing and patting his cheek like a little boy. She’s been easy to get along with, even her English is progressing faster than Yuzu’s, the two of them building up from the something that started since her senior debut.

“It’s okay?” 

She shrugs. “Maybe not okay,” she says. “But better for you.” 

As much confidence as Yuzuru has on the ice, Evgenia is just as bold off of it; he admires that part of her. She watches him now, eyes flicking over to his jacket and the blade guards laid out neatly next to his water bottle, then back up to his face.

"Okay," he sighs, getting the message. "Fine."

She grins back at him, watching as Yuzuru pulls himself up to full height, shaking himself out the way he does before a big skate.

The entire way out the doors, he tries to convince himself that everything's fine. This probably isn't even about him. He could've been a passing mention; maybe they're talking about Javier and the fact that he’s still at the Cricket Club even though he’s technically retired, or about— about a plumbing problem or something equally stupid and Yuzuru’s getting himself worked up over nothing. 

When he follows their voices (a little louder this time, something off about the whole exchange), he finds himself one of the meeting rooms just past the reception desk, the door swung all the way open. All he can see at first is Brian’s puffy jacket, at first, until Javier shifts a little next to him and Yuzuru had to put a hand hard to the doorknob just to stop himself from falling over because he knew that he’d heard someone familiar, but it wasn’t possible: they’re supposed to be worlds apart now, Yuzuru’s done with all his ice shows, he’s back in Toronto to train and—

Shoma looks up when Yuzuru’s foot hits the carpet a little too hard.

"Um," he says, voice dying out.

Brian’s impression of him is not much more than “quiet boy, very small; take care of him, Yuzu”, so he can’t tell that Shoma’s shoulders are pulled into themselves belie the fact he’s terrified and uncomfortable and he wants out, face blank but hands curling up into themselves the way they do when he’s nervous. He doesn’t speak English, and whatever words he knows…there’s no way he’s catching them as they fly over his head. The other three are talking too fast for him to understand. 

Brian’s defensive, as he is about his all skaters. He doesn’t know the whole story; he's probably pieced together enough on his own, thinking that Shoma broke his heart in Japan after Yuzuru had been glued to his phone for a two weeks coming back to TCC. He hadn’t asked much, but Yuzuru had given him a name that made him frown and said he shouldn’t get so hung up on things if he couldn’t change them anymore. 

Yuzuru’s not sure what Shoma wants, why he came here in the first place, and how, but it sounds like Brian wants him out. Probably giving him some excuse about how it’s interfering with his training. 

He’s right. Yuzuru hates to know that he's right. He’s always been a stickler for his regimen anyway — down to every calorie of his meticulously crafted diet plan and cross training for injury prevention — but all of it flies out the window when Shoma looks up at him and his fingers twisted up together, ankle rolling back and forth. Time turns to dust between them.

“Shoma,” Yuzuru breathes, and the whole room falls silent. “Hi.” 

“Hi,” he says, shoulders falling half an inch with the Japanese. 

Everyone’s staring. Yuzuru doesn’t care. “Why are you here?” 

“I was…in Chicago for camp,” Shoma says. He doesn’t know if he should say how he'd walked right up to the desk and asked for a ticket to Toronto instead of going home to Japan like he'd planned, fumbling in English, slow trying to haul all his bags with him into the taxi and ending up at the door of the Cricket Club — the only thing on his mind wanting to see Yuzu again. 

“Oh,” he says, like all the air’s been knocked out of him. 

There are a couple suitcases piled up together against the back wall, and he guesses that they’re Shoma’s. He puts two and two together: figures that he’s fresh off a plane in a country he’s only been to for competition and not for sightseeing and everyone in the room’s towering over him, both Brian and Javi not exactly hiding their disapproval.

Shoma’s not a touchy person, really ever, but all it takes is Yuzuru opening his arms a little, soft in the knees, to get him close, arms tight around his neck. Shoma has to go up on his toes to make up for the difference between the boots and sneakers, sweatpants pooling a little around his ankles even hiked up to his waist. 

Yuzuru’s arms come up around his waist. He pulls him in, tight, out of habit, dipping his chin down so he can press their faces together. He knows they’re being watched, he can feel Brian’s eyes on him, but Shoma’s here for some reason, trying to make amends or give Yuzu an explanation or maybe none of those at all, the only thing he cares about is that he’s here. On his own, after all the quiet, he's here.

“I missed you,” Shoma says, words muffled. He sounds choked up, voice tuned high. “I thought they weren’t going to let me in.” 

Yuzuru shakes his head. “I would've,” he says. He spreads his hand across Shoma’s spine, feels his breath come in short bursts, like after a big program. Feels the life of him under his fingers. “I missed you too,” he says. He thinks: no matter what, you have me.

Yuzuru wants to kiss him so badly, even coming from the plane. “Stay with me,” he blurts out. “Please.” 

He feels like Shoma’s going to reject the offer, just like he’d ignored all of Yuzuru’s texts, but—

He nods. "Okay," he says.

Yuzuru pulls away to give Shoma this smile, so sweet around the corners it hurts to see. “Let’s skate,” he says, curling their fingers together like nobody’s watching.

 

** ✼ ❊ ❉  ❈❉ ❊ ✼ **

 

It’s strange at first, being at the rink with Yuzuru again. Shoma’s still hurting all over from training camp, and his feet are swollen from the plane, but he doesn’t get on until later, curling up in one of the chairs and falling asleep with his hood pulled down far enough to hide his eyes. It’s a little uncomfortable — the armrest digs into his knees and sides — but some of the weird anxiety in his chest goes away knowing Yuzuru’s there with him, even if he’s on the ice. 

He’s not sure how much time passes before someone comes to shake him awake, Shoma’s legs feeling like lead pipes when he unfolds himself and goes to join the other skaters for ice time. He doesn’t particularly want to do anything, much less get involved in whatever jumping battle’s going on between the elites, so he tucks himself into one of the corners and scoots his feet back and forth in poor imitation of productivity. 

Shoma’s nowhere near warm, just weirdly hot all over, aching and stretched thin in a thousand different points. 

He shakes his head when Yuzuru tries to get him to join in on their dance battle. “Everything hurts,” he says, but lets Yuzu drag him over by his limp wrist, not really sure what’s going on. Half the lights are off, and there’s pop music blaring over the speakers. Evgenia’s turned into nothing but arms and the occasional leg, Jason trying to one-up her with something that…looks like it’ll end in a pulled muscle if he headbangs any harder. 

Shoma stands awkwardly to the side, and shifts his weight between both feet until everyone decides they’ve had enough and starts clearing the rink. It’s late when it happens, but sunset hasn’t quite sunk her teeth in by the time Yuzuru finishes changing and marches out of the locker room with his bags, spending an age in the lobby with Shoma just staring at his suitcases in the meeting room.  

“Sorry,” Shoma winces. 

“It’s okay,” Yuzuru says. 

They’re like this even on the way to Yuzuru’s apartment. The drive is of decent length, and by the time Yuzuru has Shoma’s stuff hauled up through the front door and shoved innocuously into the side of the living room, they’ve fallen silent, moving smooth around each other like they don’t know anything else. 

When Yuzuru looks over his shoulder, Shoma just fits: fits there in the kitchen, backlit and shuffling, forehead against the fridge as he waits for his water to fill up from the filter. He doesn’t ask what they're going to eat for dinner, accidentally banging his head on the cabinets when he gets down to his knees to pry the pot out from the back drawer. 

Shoma sits onto the counter and swings his legs back and forth when he watches the kettle for Yuzuru when he goes to shower, humming as he dries his hands on the dishtowel that hangs off the oven handle. When he gets bored of waiting for the eggs to finish after Yuzu comes back, he lays down on the couch with his DS and charger, the dinky music of his games audible even over the sound of the stove.

It’s almost too easy to imagine them living like this. Shoma breathes, and the whole world with it.

“You make me feel like home,” Yuzuru says, after they've put the dishes out to air dry, the words spilling out like tin cans. They roll to a stop between their feet, as if they’re not brave enough to have these kinds of conversations without the sky dark enough to wear like a jacket. It’s starting to get cold, just outside, the sliding door halfway open so stars and air can rush in. 

Shoma’s stiff, knees tucked up to his chest on the sofa while some variety rerun plays off the television. Yuzuru’s next to him, icing his ankles and calves, and running his fingers absentmindedly across the grooves of his tennis ball. 

He can't find the right reply, but he doesn’t have to. Nothing echoes anymore. He soaks up the lonely sounds without even trying.

“If I couldn’t give you everything,” Shoma murmurs, eventually. Yuzuru turns to look at him, his profile lit up with moving color, his chin pressed into the valley of his knees. His hair’s a little flat on the side, but frizzing at the front, eyes creased with sleep. In this moment, everything suspended, Yuzuru thinks he must know Shoma more deeply than he has before, down past even viscera and the bone. “Would you still think that?” 

Shoma’s eyes flicker, doubting, across the TV screen. Back and forth, back and forth. It was actually a gift; Yuzuru doesn’t need a flatscreen, but the package had shown up with a serviceman the day after his twenty-first and he didn’t have enough energy to question the English that was thrown in his face. 

“Is that why you stopped talking to me?” 

They keep answering questions with more questions. 

“Would you?” Shoma presses. He rarely presses. Yuzuru wants to break, wants him to have it all. He wants him to know, even if it’ll ruin them in the end.

“Yes,” he says.

Shoma swallows. When he shifts, the sound of clothing and leather are grating, between them. “Why?” 

Yuzuru sucks in a breath, holds it there.

He feels like he’s starting some a program, feels like warming up on the Olympic rink for the first time and feeling his feet slip out from under him with every step.  Yuzuru thinks of Evgenia, and how she’d tell him to be brave. All his medals, and none of them the right one when it truly comes down to it. He should put it between them now that he has the chance.

It’s a terrible truth, but one of the only ones he knows.

“Because I love you,” he says.

The whole room goes still.

“Oh,” Shoma says, like everything has come to rest inside him. Yuzuru had been expecting rejection, violence, anger, everything in between, but all Shoma does is lean over and curve into him with his spine, and presses their lips together like there’s nothing else that needs to be said. 

Yuzuru makes a noise, surprised, the sound muffled against the smile that breaks across Shoma’s face and he pulls away to cup his cheeks with both hands and climb into his lap, reach up and put the distance between them to rest. Until both of them are out of breath, and Yuzuru’s settled his hands on the low points of his hips.

Their bodies just come together like this.

“I love you too,” Shoma says.

There are stars in his eyes. Yuzuru reaches up to let Shoma put one in his chest. 

**Author's Note:**

> this started off as me wanting to write something sad, a little closer to my roots, [train](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9372395) [ fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059585/chapters/29871723), but it got away from me by the end. drinks up to 20+ hrs of editing.
> 
> [requests](http://softshoma.tumblr.com) (or come talk to me about skating!)


End file.
